Michaels keys will make a key for you, just take the machine there, there are several locations in the Dallas area. Around $30-$35.

I've got a bunch of them, there is nothing wrong with them.

You cannot be afraid of competition in the bulk vending business .

What suppliers ?

Those are oak Astros with clutch handles. The best thing about them is the bodies interchange with Beavers.

I have several of the mighty mite rockets from some routes that I purchased about five years ago, those have given me no trouble. What area of Texas are you in? We are in the DFW area.

Old timers used a 1x6, cut to length, painted black and drilled.

We used to never place them, but we wound up with some from some routes that we purchased. These locations have been good long-term moneymakers. Most of them are attended so there has not been very much vandalism. If you are unsure I would take some equipment that you do not have very much money in, chain it to some chairs inside and see what happens.

Locating is the key to the bulk vending business. If you are not someone who is willing to go cold call 10 to 20 businesses in a day, this business is probably not for you. Think about that before you take your next step.

I am interested in your route planning service. I tried to look up route online.com and did not find anything. I wanted to see what criteria it uses for planning routes. Please provide a link if you have one. We have approximately 800 locations and have been thinking about re-ordering them for more efficiency.

That is a Wizard Spiral, they are good machines. They have a Beaver coin mech. That one needs a good cleaning so you will need a special bit that has 2 prongs to take it apart. They are kind of a pain to disassemble and clean, but they can bring in the quarters in the right location. A fairly high volume location that has kids is ideal for that machine.

We tried 10 cases of Nitwits which is oak leaf's version of runts/rascals. There was a significant drop off in sales. Some or all of this drop off may be attributed to the labels . We are going to try unlabeled nitwits in the future to see if sales are affected.

Where are the pinball machines?

8 quart Cambro white plastic tubs, available at restaurant supply stores work very well. Edited to add: the square ones.

He wants out, you want in, agree upon a price, pay him and be done with it. After your deal he never wants to think about candy machines again. When I buy a neglected route the first thing I do is swap out all the equipment for nicer clean equipment. This does two things, 1. It shows there is a new Sheriff in town and 2. With a swap out you're only in the location for like 60 seconds so there isn't much of a chance for the location owner to kick you out over the previous persons poor performance. You'll still get some kick outs, but hey that's a part of this business. You should try to get the route for $2500-3000 based more on his desire to be out more than the actual value, maybe fall back to $3500 if you really want to take on this project. If it's been six months since he serviced there could be $1000 in the machines.